Adult  and  Youni  Pfeople.  October,  1913. 


Degradation  of  Ignorance  in 
Mexico. 

BY  DR.  G.  B.  WINTON. 

Ignorance  the  Mother  of  Evil. 

In  all  nations  moral  conditions  are  intimate¬ 
ly  bound  up  with  intellectual  life.  Ignorant 
men  may  be  good,  abd  educated  men  bad;  but 
taking  whole  nations  into  account,  ignorance 
is  the  mother  of  evil.  This  is  because  ig¬ 
norance  means  weakness,  and  weakness  ex¬ 
poses  humanity  to  moral  deterioration  as  well 
as  to  many  other  evils.  This  is  especially  true 
in  regard  to  social  life.  The  community  runs 
more  of  risk  in  its  morals  by  living  in  igno¬ 
rance  than  does  the  individual.  Social  evils 
are  those  that  man  perpetuates  on  man  and 
woman.  Professor  Ross  has  distinguished  be¬ 
tween  vice,  the  wrong  a  man  commits  against 
himself,  and  sin,  the  evil  that  he  does  to  his 
fellows.  Using  the  words  in  this  Sense,  it  is 
’  easy  to  see  how  sin  will  abound  where  men 
are  helpless  through  ignorance.  Their  help¬ 
lessness  makes  them  easy  victims  both  of  de¬ 
signing  men  and  of  adverse  conditions.  Even 
vice  increases  when  artificially  fomented.  The 
crowded  tenement,  for  example,  has  a  direct 
bearing  upon  the  morals  of  the  people  who  live 


in  the  slum  districts.  It  is  naturally  impossi¬ 
ble  to  parcel  out  responsibility  in  matters  cf 
this  kind.  No  adverse  conditions  excuse  a 
man  or  a  people  from  the  struggle  heavier  and 
more  hopeless  though  it  should  be. 

Causes  of  Ignorance  in  Mexico. 

In  Mexico  intellectual  limitations  have  sent 
down  deep  and  widespread  roots.  There  vas  a 
sort  of  conspiracy  of  influences  to  keep  the 
bulk  of  the  people  of  that  land  in  ignorance. 
The  landowners  preferred  to  deal  with  an  ig¬ 
norant  clientage,  because  such  people  are  eas¬ 
ier  to  exploit.  So  of  the  mining  interests. 
The  ignorant  peon  was  helpless.  He  could  not 
combine  with  his  fellows.  He  could  not  de¬ 
fend  his  rights  against  crooked  bookkeeping 
or  unfavorable  conditions  of  labor.  He  was  a 
hand,  and  nothing  more.  Employers  therefore 
found  pretexts  for  keeping  the  working  people 
in  ignorance. 

Church  Did  Not  Befriend  Education. 

Church  leaders  also  gradually  reached  the 
attitude  of  discouraging  the  education  of  the 
people.  They  did  not  really  need  to  know 
much,  so  it  was  argued.  Their  land  smiled 
with  plenty.  The  climate  made  small  demands 
in  the  matter  of  clothes  and  houses.  Their 
spiritual  advisers  assumed  full  responsibility 
in  regard  to  their  future  welfare.  The  Spanish 
government  was  equally  paternal  in  taking  en¬ 
tire  charge  of  their  present  interests.  Why, 
then,  should  they  “heat  their  heads,”  as  the 
Spanish  idiom  puts  it,  in  a  struggle  for  educa- 

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lion,  foi-  infcrmation,  for  intellectual  growth? 
There  were  practically  no  books,  for  the  ‘Index 
Expurgatorius”  suppressed  them.  There  were 
few  papers,  because  the  government  exercised 
a  severe  censorship.  There  were  no  public 
schools- — no  demand  for  them,  no  houses,  no 
teachers,  no  money  provided.  The  country 
floated  gently  down  the  stream  of  years  in  con¬ 
tented  ignorance.  Eighty  per  cent  and  more 
of  its  people  are  illiterate.  There  were  a  few 
schools  for  the  children  of  the  rich,  and  the 
government  endowed  professional  academies 
and  even  supplied  scholarships  for  foreign 
study.  The  Church  had  seminaries  for  its 
priests  and  occasional  parochial  schools  of  a 
primitive  order  for  its  parishioners’  children. 
The  catechism  by  rote  and  something  of  the. 
“Lives  of  the  Saints”  comprised  the  curriculum 
of  these  schools.  They  did  not,  for  the  most 
part,  rise  even  to  the  dignity  of  primary 
schools.  Neither  master  nor  parents  thought 
it  important  that  the  children  should  learn  to 
read.  Of  course  the  children  fell  in  with  this 
kind  of  public  sentiment  willingly  enough. 

Evil  Consequence, s. 

Many  and  varied  consequences  can  be  traced 
to  this  state  of  contented  ignorance.  It  went 
on  for  centuries.  The  social  customs  which 
grew  out  of  it  had  time  to  petrify.  It  is  the 
tendency  of  custom  to  grow  into  law,  especially 
among  a  people  dependent  upon  tradition  and 
on  word-of-mouth  precepts  for  its  intellectual 
life.  Some  of  the  traditions  that  came  to  be 

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handed  down  were  far  from  helpful  and  elevat¬ 
ing  when  translated  into  practice.  There  are 
conditions  in  Mexican  society  yet  which  shock 
the  observer  but  which  do  not  shock  the  Mexi¬ 
cans.  They  are  used  to  them.  They  see  in 
them  practices  sanctioned  by  custom  running 
back  beyond  the  memory  of  their  fathers. 
Naturally  they  reason  that  what  has  been  done 
so  long  cannot  be  much  amiss. 

Want  of  Moral  Sanctio.xs. 

Many  of  these  objectionable  practices  might 
have  been  remedied  had  the  Church  supplied 
a  moral  sanction  to  life.  But  gradually  the 
religious  life  of  the  people,  guided  wholly  by 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  came  to  divorce 
Itself  from  morals.  The  demands  w'hich  Ca¬ 
tholicism  made  could  be  met  without  regard 
to  the  spiritual  and  ethical  life.  They  were 
mostly  compliance  with  rites  and  ceremonies, 
Implicit  obedience  to  the  priest,  and  a  spirit  of 
hearty  intolerance  for  all  dissent.  None  of 
these  have  to  do  with  morals.  Hence,  humanly 
speaking,  a  man  could  be  as  immoral  as  he 
liked  and  remain  a  good  Catholic. 


Foreign  Department  Woman’s  Missionary  Council, 
M.  B.  Church,  South.  810  Broadway, 
Nashville,  Tenn. 

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